SECURITY

Dinh Y Nhi

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SECURITY
Dinh Y Nhi
6 - 28 June, 2009

Published 2009 by Thavibu Gallery Co., Ltd Silom Galleria, Suite 308 919/1 Silom Road, Bangkok 10500, Thailand Tel. 66 (0)2 266 5454, Fax. 66 (0)2 266 5455 Email. info@thavibu.com, www.thavibu.com Layout by Wanee Tipchindachaikul, Copydesk, Thailand Copyright Thavibu Gallery All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

SECURITY
by Shireen Naziree

Though Vietnams art scene gained new currency after the implementation of Doi Moi, the easing of its socialist policies and market reforms in 1986, the evocation of its cultural narrative has largely turned towards a romantic past while its history pushes forward with political, economic and cultural considerations that have dictated various strategies of reconstruction. Though the relationship between material fact and illusion, structure and space have become a shared language that compels many artists today, the formalism in Vietnamese contemporary art practices does not readily embrace commentary that is personal or socially critical. As with many contemporary thinkers, Dinh Y Nhi rejects the notion of collective memory and its links to a past which unite many of her contemporaries in a reassuring cult of remembrance. Instead, her artistic practice has evolved from questioning the position of women in her Vietnamese society and by withholding any solace, her imagery distils any stereotyped considerations of her gender. Since her graduation from the Hanoi University of Fine Arts in 1989, Nhi has pioneered a practice that has applied conceptual strategies to visual considerations. And maybe more than any other Vietnamese woman artist of her generation, she has earned her place amongst the most influential post Doi Moi artists to have emerged. As the daughter of prominent artist Dinh Truong Khang, Nhi developed an intimate knowledge of arts formalism very early in her career. However, because conventional art critical approaches were premised on the formal appearance of physical subjects, they failed to register and assess crucial aspects of the contextual nature of her dialogue, thereby challenging traditional boundaries within a culture where mainstream value systems remain conservative. Amongst Dinh Y Nhis earlier works are depictions of women that, while intimate, feel charged with a rough emotional urgency. The atmosphere recurs in SECURITY where Nhi succeeds in turning her subjects into a kind of painterly residue that is recognizably material of an external world, but still feminine and unmistakably sexual beings. Totally unapologetic about any perceived notions about Vietnamese women, her use of raw colour, manipulation of depth and the fusion of simplified forms her work is distinguished by a balance of incisive draftsmanship and painterly modelling. Several works assert the transformative nature of the artists relationship of art production to her cultural world. Though in much of this body of work, a conventionally defined subject remains elusive - in its place the artistic
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Security (9), 2008

Oil on canvas 120 x 160 cm

process itself emerges both as the structure and subject of Nhis practice. While Nhis painterly concerns are chiefly formal, her logic contains the potential for a deeper, more fertile engagement of her subjects. The patented combination of informality and symbolic charge in the art of Dinh Y Nhi reflect a sense of how social reality and the dream world express each other. Nhi links desire and personal violation in ever changing ways at times adopting a preferred consistency of thought and morality of art as a code of being. As such her works are about the notion of mirroring such as in Security (9). By embracing the complexity of her subjects experience the viewer can also move beyond the limitations of static vision. The artists perception of sanctioning the moralities and ethics that define security may be further located in works such as Security (15) which like most of the works in this series is at times rendered in arresting red taints that suggest the physical and emotional connection women have with their bodies and the experience of being secure within oneself: these images encompass simple gestures and appropriations that despite their visual economy evince sincere sensibilities. At the same time, by combining an acute sense of respect in what might be termed the formal characteristics of feeling Nhi manages to situate her own emotional connection with her subjects at the centre of her practice, while avoiding the sentimental or the naive. For if relational aesthetics concern the economy of human intimacy, then Nhis enquiries extend beyond any personal realm but extending itself into a public domain.

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Security (15), 2008

Oil on canvas 109 x 150 cm

Security (3), 2008

Oil on canvas 87 x 140 cm

Security (8), 2009

Oil on canvas 80 x 96 cm

Nhi often frames her subjects as in Security (3), thus allowing the careful viewer to contemplate and question their own sense or idea of security when confronted with an alienated public domain which often dictates our civilised daily lives and thus disrupting the safe space of self. As such, Nhi explores territory and principles that lie beneath the surface and through its dimensions underline not only our insecurities but the social dynamics that enforces them. Nhi is evidently less interested in rehashing theories of the male gaze here, but rather how the human eye and memory form an ideal, creating a desire for identification. The dynamic in a depiction such as in Security (8) suggests an abstract connection between the female character housed in a socially trapped body and someone she has lost or yearning for, or in more overt terms, reinforcing the ideal feminine objectification of being delicately pretty. Dinh Y Nhi has spent much of her practice surveying the female psyche and through SECURITY she offers an opportunity to examine the inner characteristics that deliberate feminism. From early in her career, she wanted her art to rise above the opposition between narrative and abstraction. While she continuously challenges herself with line and colour, the world of her art does not refer to renouncing any relationship to reality. Her colours are most often very primary and the randomness of application has become part of her equation that emphasise her expressions of straight forward thought and reasoning. This deliberate restriction of her palette refers to more than emphasizing her subjects; it not only creates a temporal distance but allows for text and imagery to unite on a single plain allowing each viewer to decide on how to read into her paintings.
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Security (1), 2009 | Oil on canvas | 90 x 140 cm

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Security (2), 2008 | Oil on canvas | 120 x 150 cm

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Security (3), 2008 | Oil on canvas | 87 x 140 cm

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Security (4), 2009 | Oil on canvas | 120 x 160 cm

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Security (5), 2009 | Oil on canvas | 90 x 120 cm

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Security (6), 2009 | Oil on canvas | 120 x 170 cm

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Security (7), 2008 | Oil on canvas | 130 x 130 cm

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Security (8), 2009 | Oil on canvas | 80 x 96 cm

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Security (9), 2008 | Oil on canvas | 120 x 160 cm

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Security (10), 2008 | Oil on canvas | 110 x 160 cm

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Security (11), 2009 | Oil on canvas | 80 x 96 cm

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Security (12), 2008 | Oil on canvas | 110 x 150 cm

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Security (13), 2009 | Oil on canvas | 120 x 160 cm

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Security (14), 2007 | Oil on canvas | 110 x 150 cm

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Security (15), 2008 | Oil on canvas | 109 x 150 cm

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CHRONOLOGY

Dinh Y Nhi Born 1967, Hanoi Bachelor of Fine Arts from Hanoi University of Fine Arts, 1989 Member of Vietnam Fine Arts Association SELECTED ART EXHIBITIONS 1990 1993 1995 1996 1997 S E C U R I T Y

National Art Exhibition Hanoi, Vietnam Asian Art Exhibition Dhaka, Bangladesh Group exhibition at Itoyama Gallery Tokyo, Japan An Ocean Apart at Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition USA Solo show at Vietnam Fine Arts Association Gallery Hanoi, Vietnam Group show at Museum Fujita Tokyo, Japan Group show at the Contemporary Arts Exhibition Centre Amsterdam, Netherlands A Winding River at Meridian International Centre Washington, USA Group show at Centre Wallonie-Brixelles Paris, France

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1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2005 2006 2008 2009

Solo show at Mai Gallery Hanoi, Vietnam Solo show at Forum Schloss Platz Aarau, Switzerland Group show at City Museum Paris, France Group show at Art Museum Bassano Del Grappa Vincenza, Italy Group show at Art Museum Busan Busan, Korea A Century of Vietnamese Modern Art European Union Tour Solo show at Asian Fine Art Factory Berlin, Germany Solo show at the Goethe Institute Hanoi, Vietnam Solo show at Canvas International Arts Amsterdam, Netherlands Group show at Frankfurt Arts Frankfurt, Germany Group show at the University of the Philippines Manila, Philippines Gallactica group show at Vietnam Fine Arts Association Hanoi, Vietnam Solo show at Gallery 55 Bangkok, Thailand Vietnam Art Actuel at the University of Montreal Montreal, Canada In Memory, the Art of Afterward at Sidney Mishkin Gallery New York, USA Solo show at Art Vietnam Gallery Hanoi, Vietnam Solo show at Gallery 55 Shanghai, China Artists from Vietnam Mumbai, India Changing Identities at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts Salt Lake City, USA Solo show Security at Thavibu Gallery Bangkok, Thailand

MUSEUM COLLECTIONS Singapore Art Museum National Art Gallery of Malaysia Vietnam Fine Art Museum

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